Nick Vaughn is an artist who lives...

Nick Vaughn is an artist who lives in Santa Ana. His work--in such non-traditional media as men’s clothing--involves explorations of human perception and cultural norms. “I don’t think art creates curiosity,” he says. “That comes from somewhere else. (But) at its best, art can reward curiosity.”

* Watts Towers by Simon Rodia, 1765 E. 107 St., Los Angeles: It’s the back-yard project that got out of hand. I think of the absurdity of carrying a private vision to that length--the level of commitment. The guy gave up everything for this project. I saw that piece reproduced 15 or 20 times before I went to view it. It’s so much more spectacular (in person). It’s a kind of grungy thing, not nearly as pristine as it looks in photos. It has a kind of ‘hands-on’ quality. Somebody actually built this thing; it didn’t drop in from the sky. It’s in this kind of ramshackle area, right next to the railroad tracks. You turn a corner and there it is, at the end of the block. There’s no way to describe the surprise. There’s a kind of clarity about it too. It’s not just a jumbled mass of pottery shards and concrete. It’s composed.

* “the capacity of absorption,” a three-room installation by Ann Hamilton, at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Temporary Contemporary in Los Angeles in 1988: In the first room, the walls were covered with wax. Copper arms coming out of the wall held 600 to 700 cafeteria glasses, each one half-filled with water spinning in a little whirlpool. On one end, there was a TV monitor with the image of water pouring into an ear. On the other end, there was an old telephone receiver--the part you listen to. By accident, someone happened to talk into it when I was there, and all the motion stopped in the glasses of water.

The next room had dank, algae-smeared walls and a long wooden table with water running just beneath the surface. There were small holes through which you could put your fingers in the water. A person whose hands were in the water was sitting there. The tail of the straitjacket this person wore trailed into a third room, where it was hooked to a giant buoy. The floor of the third room was completely covered with newspaper type. A small figure in the corner was spinning on a shelf.

It seemed to me it appealed directly to the senses, and more than just one. Incredibly imaginative. It was such a sensual treat, although the three rooms didn’t all come together (to form a central idea). It was the kind of piece you just immerse yourself in.

* “Rotating Circle,” an installation by Charles Ray that was part of his one-man show at the Newport Harbor Art Museum two years ago: You don’t have to know much (about art) to have that piece really undercut your perceptions. As you enter the gallery, you hear this roar coming out of the wall. I don’t think I even saw anything. I thought, “There must be a speaker emitting this loud vibration.” So I walked toward the sound, and there was a circular slot on the wall. The diameter of the slot was maybe seven inches, and the slot was about one-eighth of an inch wide. My initial reaction was, “Oh, this is a speaker, and sound is coming out of that sliver in the wall.” Then I read the title, “Rotating Circle,” and I realized that the center portion was spinning. It was imperceptible. No amount of scrutiny could confirm what you knew was occurring. . . . I like work that undercuts my faith in myself. That’s what this piece does in a very direct way. You can’t perceive the reality; you just imagine it.

* David Ireland’s “500 Capp Street,” a renovated house in San Francisco: This is the only piece of the five I personally have not seen. But I’ve seen it documented, and I’ve spoken to the artist about it. The piece is about a level of alertness that most of us don’t have. The vocabulary is the interior of a house which is really in a transitional state.

You have these walls that are stripped of wallpaper. He varnished all the walls, which gives them a kind of golden cast. He took the (discarded) wallpaper and clumped it into balls. Some were displayed in glass cases; some were stuck to the wall. One window was covered with copper sheeting. A tape was playing--of sounds you might hear had you been able to open the window and look out. There was a sculpture made of a bunch of brooms that he found in the attic. They were essentially trash when he found them, but he transformed them, as he did the house.

At certain places in San Francisco--bars that artists frequented--he posted notices that the house was open and people could wander in at any time, look through his drawers, open his closets. The door was unlocked. It went like that for two or three years. The first people who came were the explorers, the adventurers. The ones after that were the tourists. That’s when he decided to close it down.

* Frida Kahlo’s “Self Portrait as Tehuana (Diego On My Mind)”: I could have picked any number of her self-portraits. I guess one of the things I liked about it was that it’s such a rudimentary form of expression. Her face is surrounded by this very elaborate veil. Her face pokes through almost as though it were a cutout. On her forehead, there is a painting of Diego (her husband) from the shoulders up. It’s a piece that should just be the lamest thing stuck on canvas, but it’s so straightforward and earnest--as are all her self-portraits--that the effort really comes through. There are also these black arteries that run through the entire canvas. I don’t know if they are vines without leaves or what. They’re kind of horrific. She looks imprisoned.

Favorite Things appears Wednesdays in the Calendar section of The Times Orange County Edition.